8
Little Italy, Manhattan
Without bothering to remove his shoes, Sokolov swung his legs up onto the creaky bed, sat back, and closed his eyes. He tried to master his breathing and slow his still-racing heartbeat, but all he could think was that his life, his second life, the one he’d built up over decades and had grown to love, was now over.
Out in the open, he had very deliberately kept his mind away from the circumstances of his flight and from that debilitating conclusion. Now that he was alone and-he hoped-safe, at least for the time being, his attention slipped back to earlier that day, back at his apartment, back when he merely thought his wife was late, rather than in the hands of those monsters.
They have Daphne.
They have my laposhka.
The thought forced Sokolov to sit up again, bolt upright. His lips were quivering, as were his hands. He looked around his crummy hotel room in abject panic. The sight was as grim and desperate as he felt. The walls were cracked, and two columns of dirty yellow light were leaking into the room through moth-eaten drapes from a streetlamp outside. He could almost hear the mites and roaches scratching and scurrying around beneath him. He shut his eyes again and tried to imagine that he was back at home in Astoria, listening to his beloved music with his even-more-beloved Daphne curled up next to him on the couch, but his mind wouldn’t play along and forced him to confront the reality of his situation: that he was hiding in a thirty-dollar-a-night roach-fest in Little Italy, his wife was being held captive, and he had killed a man.
THE APARTMENT’S ENTRY BUZZER sounded in the hallway, and Sokolov checked his watch. It could only be Daphne, of course-who else would it be that early in the morning? No doubt she was running late and her keys were buried at the bottom of her bag. Not the first time that had happened, nor would it be the last.
“Here you go, laposhka,” he said as he buzzed her in. “I’ll get the tea ready.”
Leaving the front door open, he hummed along to the Rachmaninoff coming from the living room as he padded back to the kitchen, thinking he didn’t have that much time before he’d have to set off to work. He turned the kettle on and slipped a couple of slices of rye bread into the toaster, but as he waited to hear her walk into the apartment, something deep within clawed at him-and the unfamiliar, sharp footfalls he heard coming his way only confirmed his unease.
His body taut with apprehension, he stepped out of the kitchen and into the foyer, only to come face-to-face with a complete stranger. Sokolov immediately knew he was Russian. Not just Russian. An agent of the Russian state. He emitted that unmistakable combination of arrogance, resentment, and thinly suppressed violence, traits Sokolov knew well.
Traits he’d happily left behind many years ago.
They’d found him.
And given the ominous timing, it meant they also had Daphne.
Sokolov’s heart imploded. He’d finally made the mistake of sticking his head above the parapet, just once, after all this time, and almost immediately, his wife had paid the price. Nothing was more Russian than that. Not even the unblinking eyes staring at him.
“Dobroe utro, Comrade Shislenko,” the man greeted him with a sneer of blunt irony as he pulled a handgun from his black leather coat and leveled it at Sokolov’s chest.
Sokolov stared at the gun and backed away from his uninvited guest, as instructed by the sideways flicks of the gun in the man’s hand, until he was standing in his living room.
“Thank you for alerting us to your whereabouts-and, indeed, to your intentions-in so unambiguous a manner,” he told Sokolov in Russian.
Sokolov was standing by the stereo. “Where’s my wife?” he asked as his fingers reached out and hit a button on his CD player, killing the Rachmaninoff.
The man’s face soured. “Why’d you stop it? I thought the concerto added a nice nostalgic ambiance to our little gathering, no?”
“Where’s Daphne?” Sokolov insisted, his voice breaking.
“Oh, she’s fine. And she’ll stay fine as long as you behave,” the man told him as he sat down in an armchair facing the window.
He gestured for Sokolov to sit on the sofa adjacent to him, by the wall of bookshelves that were jammed with books and home to an elaborate hi-fi and a pair of expensive-looking speakers.
The speakers were positioned in such a way that the far armchair was the optimal listening point. Sokolov had spent many hours sitting in that very chair, reading the Times and listening to Scriabin preludes and Tchaikovsky ballets. Right now, it was precisely where he needed his guest to be sitting.
“We should charge you for all the resources we spent looking for you all these years, both here and back home. But no matter. We have you now. Once you’ve given us what we want-what you stole-we’ll let your wife go free. I can’t promise the same for you. That’s out of my hands.” The man scratched one unshaven cheek with the muzzle of his gun. “Does she even know who you are?”
Sokolov shook his head.
“Good. We suspected that would be the case. So her safety depends entirely on your actions,” the man said-then an odd, confused look flooded his face, and a thin film of sweat broke out across his forehead.
Sokolov watched nervously as the man switched the handgun to his left hand and back again as he shrugged himself out of his coat.
“Why do you keep the place so hot?” he asked. “And what’s that noise?” The man rubbed his ear irritably. “Sounds like you have cockroaches in the walls.”
Sokolov leaned forward and, concentrating as hard as he could to stay in control, stared directly into the man’s eyes.
“Don’t worry about the tarakanchiki. They don’t care about you. Tell me, Comrade. What is your name?”
The man furrowed his brow and winced, as if he had just stepped on a tack. He seemed to wonder about the question for a moment, then, his expression vacant, he said, “Fyodor Yakovlev. Third secretary to the Russian Consulate of New York.” He looked lost, as if he wasn’t quite sure that this was the case.
Sokolov kept his eyes lasered on his captor, his concentration absolute. He knew his whole existence from here on depended on this moment, and with each sentence, he slowed and deepened his voice, accentuating seemingly random syllables.
“If they see the gun, they will be angry. You should place the gun on the table,” he told the man.
“Who? Who will be angry?”
“You know who will be angry,” Sokolov told him. “They will be very angry. Now, why don’t you show them you mean well and put your gun down on the table.” He tapped the coffee table with his fingers. “This table right here.”
Yakovlev stared at him for a moment, then slowly placed his gun on the glass table between them. Sokolov made no attempt to pick it up.
After a moment, Yakovlev shifted in his chair, then made to retrieve his gun, as though he knew he’d just made a grave mistake.